Raaaaaaaaachester - The Experience

Please note that if you are looking for race details, they'll be included in a separate post. For now, this post will capture all the awesomeness that was non-racing of my weekend in Rochester.

The race wasn't until 6pm so I had a lot of time to kill.

The day started off great with a solid breakfast of bagels and cream cheese with my mom and sister. We spent the late morning watching a few episodes of The Wonder Years. Man what a great program.

Early in the afternoon, we decided to go shopping at Mentality in the Village of Pittsford. Mentality is the place to shop for designer men's clothing in all of New York (outside of Manhattan). It was a little chilly in Rochester this weekend so I wanted to pick up something with long sleeves, either a Spring jacket (hopefully on sale since it is out of season) or a hoodie of some sort (same, although hoodies are never really out of season). I ended up finding a sweet reversible and oh-so-comfy zip up hoodie. The denim bar at Mentality is definitely its main attraction. Citizens of Humanity, Seven for all Mankind, Paper Denim & Cloth, Juicy Couture, Rock and Republic, True Religion . . . you name it, they have it. I probably tried on eight pairs of jeans . . . I was looking for a very light wash and found the perfect pair in a semi-destroyed pair of Paper Denims, unfortunately they only had them in 31 and I just couldn't bring myself to buy such a loose pair of jeans . . . which brings me to a pair of Rock and Republic jeans I tried on. Now, much has been made of my massive quads (mostly by myself, but who's counting?) but this was honestly ridiculous. The waist of the jeans was fine, or would have been fine, if I had been able to get them high enough to get them around my waist. As we all know, tight jeans are important and give you the must super of superhuman powers, but this was beyond anything that was called for. Anyways, I ended up settling on a single pair of Kasils, my first ever pair of dark jeans, that I was on the fence about until I just slightly folded the cuff up and decided they were awesome.

So, having bought an awesome new pair of tight jeans, I was looking good as far as the necessary pre-race prep (i.e. I had a sweet pair of tight, not the tightest but still tight, jeans going into an important race). I got down to the course quite early, had a chat with Matty White of Fiordifrutta, did some real honest-to-goodness warming up (I hate warming up) and then did my thing (see The Race post).

After the Pro race, I took the family home and met up with a old friend from high school at her apartment on East Ave (a really nice, artsy, collegial and happening area of town) to catch up. We ended up going to The Old Toad, a place I've been only twice before. I have to rate it as the best pub in Rochester and maybe the best bar in Rochester, period. Read the RocWiki entry for some details on the staff. Around 1am, as I was ordering some more pints, a guy on the corner of the bar started talking to us, asking us where we're from. When we told him we grew up in Rochester, he belts out "Raaaaaaaaaaaachester" in a deep, throaty, rumbling kind of way, imitating yet somewhat exaggerating the awful nasal Rochestarian accent. Turns out he was from England, Portsmouth, actually (or, as he said, "Por-muf") and was one of the staff though not working that night. The combination of:

1. Him being hammered
2. Us doing our best Rochester accents
3. Also us trying to do our best British accents . . .
4. . . . which then morphed into Aussie/Kiwi accents

All resulted in him ordering shot after shot after pint after pint for us (no charge) and Good Times Were Had By All. And so ended an incredible day of food, shopping, racing and drinking.